


Bumps in the Road

by Brumeier



Series: Bite Sized Fic [87]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Established Relationship, Kid Fic, M/M, Parent-Child Relationship, Prompt Fill, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-29
Updated: 2016-06-29
Packaged: 2018-07-18 23:17:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7334950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brumeier/pseuds/Brumeier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This one covers three different prompts:</p><p>LJ Comment Fic for Travel prompt: <i>Stargate Atlantis, any, the joys of traveling with small children.</i></p><p>LJ Comment Fic for Travel prompt: <i>author's choice, author's choice, "We've been listening to this for the past three states! Can we please find something else?!"</i></p><p>LJ Comment Fic for Travel prompt: <i>any. any. "Are we there yet?"</i></p><p>In which John, Rodney and AJ take their first - and possibly last - Earthside road trip together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bumps in the Road

**Author's Note:**

> Edited to fix some dialogue issues.

“Fly, Daddy!”

“Daddy can’t fly this,” Rodney explained. “It’s a car. Remember we talked about cars?”

AJ shook his head. “I don't like cars. Fly!”

“Tell me again why we didn’t just take a plane to Jeannie’s?”

John huffed out a laugh. “Because we wanted AJ to see as much as he could while we’re here, and you can’t do that in a plane.”

“Right.” Rodney seemed to recall that he’d also balked at the idea of being the annoying couple with the loud kid on the plane, the kind he’d always complained about.

It was AJ’s first trip to Earth – and technically John and Rodney’s honeymoon – and he’d been wound up about it for weeks, even though Rodney wasn’t sure he understood exactly what it meant to visit his aunt and his cousin. So far it had been a trip to the Gate Bridge, a forty-eight hour quarantine, and then a day at Cheyenne Mountain for a debrief. 

AJ had handled everything pretty well so far, even Dr. Lam’s physical exam. Rodney had to admit that he’d enjoyed showing his son around to everyone. There was something very validating about having a cute, smart, well-adjusted child that everyone seemed to fall in love with on sight. And somehow Mitchell and AJ had become fast friends; AJ had cried when it was time to leave.

“Do you remember how the car goes?” John asked, turning in the driver’s seat to look back at AJ.

“Vroom!”

“That’s right! Let’s roll.” John turned the car on, and pumped the gas a few time to rev the engine.

“Vroom!” AJ shouted.

Rodney rolled his eyes. John was clearly a bad influence, because AJ displayed far too many of his adrenalin junkie tendencies.

“Keep it under sixty, Mario Andretti,” Rodney advised. “AJ doesn’t need a run-in with cops to add to his vacation experiences.”

“Don’t be a buzzkill, McKay,” John said. He peeled out of the motor pool lot, which was completely unnecessary but had AJ squealing.

Rodney braced himself on the dashboard. “Stop pandering to the three year old!”

John obediently slowed the rental car down to a crawl, ostentatiously maintaining the posted speed limit. They made it a half hour past the Colorado Springs city limits when AJ began to wail in the backseat.

“What? What is it?” 

Rodney turned in his seat as much as the seatbelt would allow, looking for a bee or a twisted strap or whatever else might have hurt his son. 

“Mr. Woobie!” AJ screamed, red in the face and his little hands clenched into fists.

John and Rodney shared a look of pure panic.

“Did you pack it?”

“I thought you did!”

John pulled over on the shoulder and did a quick check of the bags in the trunk while Rodney made a thorough search of the backseat. No Mr. Woobie. AJ continued to cry like he’d lost a limb instead of the dirty stuffed…thing…that Ronon had given him.

“We have to go back,” Rodney said with a sigh.

“I’ll call Mitchell.” John pulled out his cell phone.

Rodney slid into the car next to AJ’s carseat. “We’ll go back and get Mr. Woobie, okay? Daddy’s calling Cam right now.”

“Camie?” AJ asked, his breath hitching. Big, fat tears rolled down his cheeks.

John leaned down to look at AJ, one hand on the roof of the car and the phone still to his ear. “Cam’s going to organize a search. He’ll meet us at the front gate.”

“Camie!” AJ made grabby hands for the phone, but John put it on speaker. “Camie! I losted Mr. Woobie!”

_We’ll find him, sport, don’t you worry._

“’kay.” AJ rubbed at his eyes. “Poppa, I'm thirsty.”

Rodney pulled out the travel wipes and cleaned off AJ’s face, and got him his sippy cup. By the time John got the car turned around and headed back to the Mountain, AJ was asleep and Rodney had decided they were never traveling anywhere ever again.

*o*o*o*

“I can’t do this anymore,” Rodney said desperately. “Let me out. I’m walking.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” John replied.

“We’ve been listening to the same playlist since Denver. Over two hundred miles, John! I can’t take it!”

“Would you rather listen to AJ whine for the next hundred miles?” John asked, a little more snappishly than Rodney thought was warranted under the circumstances.

“There has to be a third option.”

But Rodney knew there wasn’t, and so AJ’s playlist continued unabated. Anyone who heard it would think they were crazy, since it was made up of Athosian songs for children, the sound of the wormhole engaging in the Gate, Ronon reading Satedan poetry, Torren and AJ singing something in Japanese, and John reading AJ’s current favorite book, _My Many-Colored Days_.

It had seemed like a cute idea at the time.

They’d tried playing other music – Johnny Cash, Wagner’s _Die Walküre_ , even something Madison sent called Kidz Bop – but AJ wanted the familiar sounds of home.

“Do you think Earth is freaking him out?” Rodney whispered.

“I think he’s just out of his element, Rodney. He’s doing fine.”

“TJ!” AJ cried when his song with Torren rolled around. Again. “It’s me and TJ, Poppa! TJ and AJ!”

“Yes, I know,” Rodney said wearily. “We need to expand his musical library when we get home. I can’t take another trip like this. Also, we’re flying back to Colorado. I don’t care if people hate us.”

“Who hates us?”

“The people on the plane,” Rodney said, like it was a no-brainer.

“What are you talking about?”

“Poppa? My penis hurts.”

Rodney flipped down the visor and peered at AJ in the mirror. “Again? We stopped twenty minutes ago!”

“Can you hold it, buddy?” John asked.

“No, Daddy.”

Rodney hadn’t thought he’d ever feel nostalgic for diapers. Trust his son to potty train early. Also, he really needed to work with AJ on expressing his need to urinate in a more subtle way.

“Wait. What are you doing?”

“Pulling the car over. It’s too far to the next rest stop.”

“He’s not peeing on the side of the highway!” 

Rodney’s words fell on deaf ears, because John was already out of the car and getting AJ out of his carseat. 

“Here we go, buddy.”

“People will see him!” Rodney hissed.

“He’s behind the car, Rodney, and he’s like two feet tall. No-one’s going to see him.” John also blocked AJ with his own body as he explained how to pee without sitting on the potty.

It was all AJ wanted to talk about for the next twenty-five miles.

*o*o*o*

“No more car. Let me out!”

“We’re almost there, buddy,” John said.

Rodney was fighting a pounding headache. He’d taken over driving in Michigan to give John a break. It had been a long two days on the road, and he wished he could go back in time and tell himself to fly from Colorado Springs to Toronto instead of drive. So far the only relief they’d had was at the hotel they stayed at overnight; AJ had been over the moon with the pool, which meant it was time to start swimming lessons back home, and he’d loved getting room service and eating in bed.

Thankfully the border crossing had gone smoothly. AJ technically had multiple citizenship, since he’d been born in Pegasus, but as far as the government was concerned he just had dual citizenship. And AJ had been all eyes when a Mountie happened to be on hand. Rodney had a picture of AJ wearing the big hat as the lock screen on his cell phone.

“Let me out!”

Rodney glanced in the rearview mirror, and saw AJ tugging ineffectually at his five point harness. “We only have an hour left, AJ.”

“He doesn’t know how long an hour is, Rodney,” John pointed out. He was slumped against the passenger door with his eyes closed and his arms crossed over his chest.

“Oh. Right. Um…we’ll be at Aunt Jeannie’s in the time it takes Daddy to go running with Uncle Ronon.”

“No. Out! Out!”

AJ started to cry, and Rodney started looking for a handy abutment to drive into. He loved his son, he really did, but this roadtrip thing was for the birds. In fact, the next time they came Earthside he was going to insist that the SGC simply beam them where they needed to go.

As an alternative to the abutment, Rodney found a place to pull off the highway. John blinked his eyes open.

“Why are we stopping? We’re so close.”

“We’ll get there when we get there.” Rodney got out of the car and went around to the back, unstrapping AJ from his seat and pulling him out. “It’s okay, little man. I know you’re tired of being in the car. Me, too.”

AJ clung to Rodney’s neck, sniffling wetly.

“When we get to Aunt Jeannie’s you can run around with Madison all you want. Okay?”

AJ nodded, and stuck his thumb in his mouth.

“Do you want Daddy to sit in the back with you?” Rodney asked. “You two could take a nap, and when you wake up we’ll be at Aunt Jeannie’s.”

“Nap with Daddy.”

“Good call,” John said. He unfolded himself from the front seat, and pressed a kiss to Rodney’s head as he passed by.

AJ submitted to being strapped back into his seat. He rested his head on John’s shoulder, and rubbed John’s arm with the hand that wasn’t already engaged in thumb sucking. Mr. Woobie was snugly tucked next to his leg. 

As Rodney drove them on towards Toronto, John and AJ snoozing with their heads together and blessed silence coming from the speakers, he thought maybe the trip hadn’t been all bad. They’d survived it, and by pop culture standards that was the best way to achieve maximum family bonding.

But seriously. Never again.

**Author's Note:**

>  **AN:** So, some of this might be based on my own son when he was AJ’s age. Picture us in Mormon church, about to see my niece get baptized, and my son says in a stage whisper, “Mommy, my penis hurts.” I was happy when that particular stage passed. ::grins:: Ah, memories!


End file.
